Myanmar says nine police killed by insurgents on Bangladesh border

Myanmar said at least nine police officers were killed and four were wounded on Sunday in multiple assaults on border guard posts along the Southeast Asian nation’s troubled frontier with Bangladesh.

Eight attackers, identified only as “insurgent terrorists,” but believed by officials to belong to a Muslim group, were killed and two were captured alive in clashes in the western state of Rakhine since the early hours of Sunday, national police chief Zaw Win told a press conference.

Rakhine is home to about 1.1 million members of the mostly Muslim Rohingya ethnic group, most of whom are denied citizenship and face severe restrictions on their movements.

About 125,000 people, most of them Rohingya, have been displaced since 2012 when intercommunal violence left more than 100 people dead in Rakhine.

A state official told Reuters he believed Sunday’s assailants belonged to the Muslim group.

The attacks began at 1:30am on Sunday when some 90 assailants stormed a police force office in Kyiganbyin village, Maungdaw Township, Zaw Win told reporters in the capital, Naypyitaw.